"Hey. Hey! Hello? Boy...man. Parry?"

"Yes, Styak?"

"What's with your memories?"

They had paid for passage down the river, the barge loaded with goods for several stops. They would get off at Fishmouth, hardly more than three days along the current. There was no need for Parry to work, but he lent a hand all the same, giving a good mop to the deck. Busy hands made for a free mind, which he let drift to join the demon in his vault.

"You can't have run out, this is ten thousand years' subjective time, possibly more. I've long since lost count."

"That's not all you've lost," the kitten-shaped demon complained. "There's no order to it. I've cut a swath through these cells at the top layer and a few below, each one is unconnected by anything but proximity."

By way of demonstration, the little calico dipped through a tear in one cell. "This is you as the daughter of a spice merchant learning to ride and falling off a camel in Taihar, ten years from now. You got sand in your--"

"What's the problem?" Parry interrupted.

"It's not this life, obviously. It's not your last life, Overlord Parry. So how many lives ago was it?"

Parry shrugged mentally. "I haven't been a human female in the last thirty reincarnations, and before that I hadn't been in any of the southern desert countries for a dozen more. So...sometime before that."

The demon look as aghast as a cat could. "Adjacent memory cells have memories completely at odds. These eight all around are from different lives and decades. Nothing's grouped, nothing follows. Above and below are just as random: here you are six months ago in some ice-bound village without a name, trying to skin a yeti. If you hadn't glanced at the sky I wouldn't even know the time of year."

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Parry considered. "There used to be more order, but it jumbles up every new life. I try to keep the most important at the ready. I suppose that's how you found my last interaction with the Creator. But it doesn't last."

"Can't you map it all or impose some kind of system? It's infuriatingly random. How do you remember anything at all?"

"During my current life my mind holds things reasonably well, but all the ones before are layered away, then those layers are shifted and broken and pushed about. That's my enemy's revenge: rebirth is an earthquake for the bedrock of my memories."

"Very poetic," Styak offered dryly. "Here, a little deeper, a memory of you at Academy studying magic circle sealing signs, and one cell away, the same lesson from a different life, apparently when you were studying under some librarian named 'Master Pthyx.'"

Parry laughed. "Him! I remember robbing him blind by the end of that apprenticeship. That was...at least a hundred lifetimes ago. Or more, I was his apprentice several times."

"Why is the same lesson together? Is that how you're organized? Why did you study again when you already knew it?"

"Repetition strengthens memory. Even when I can recall something, if it's important I try to relearn it in my current life."

"But...!" The demon looked beside itself with frustration. "The redundancy! It's hard enough to find any connections, and then I stumble on the same basic thing two or three times, all from different lifetimes. And I can't tell if it's a memory you can access now or if it's one hidden from you today."

That brought out a smile. "Then I suppose you've got your work cut out for you. Dig all you want." He swept his hands from the nearly infinite horizon and back, tamped his foot on the miles-deep stacks. "Who knows where all this will lead you? If you find something you think I ought to remember in this life, let me know."

"I'm going to go mad, aren't I?"

"Avoid insanity if you can. I've been mad before, I don't recommend it. Too many hours wasted with gibbering."

It was so much easier to swab the deck.